With the advent of the Internet, electronic commerce has become one of the fastest growing segments of the economy, due to the fact that the Internet is an easily accessible platform allowing individuals to transact with each other regardless of geographical boundaries or pre-existing relationships. As a result, this forum has lead to unparalleled opportunities for businesses and consumers. Currently, thousands of businesses and individuals offer virtually every type of product and service for purchase online, facilitating the exchange of over a billion dollars in goods each year. Moreover, as the Internet becomes more prolific in society, the number of transactions are expected to increase dramatically.
However, despite the Internet's success in facilitating commerce, hurdles still exist that prevent many businesses and consumers from successfully utilizing the Internet to facilitate business. One significant area this is readily apparent is in the sale and purchase of services, such as project work. For instance, due to the remote nature of Internet business transactions, services are difficult to market, especially as compared to goods, which are often uniform and can be more easily represented with present day technology. For instance, a consumer concerned about the quality of goods can purchase a well known brand name to reassure themselves that they are going to receive consistent quality even while purchasing site unseen, possibly from a vendor the consumer hasn't previously transacted with. Furthermore, consumers can often view goods online. On the contrary, services are difficult to market over the Internet using conventional websites because these services are not consistent, inventoried items, or items that are ready for exchange in a matter of a few days. Often, services take considerable amount of time to complete and require special skills. Furthermore, depending upon the work to be completed, a service must often be tailored to a customer, and the customer must know the service provider has the skill set to complete the service to the consumer's satisfaction. Conventional models based on the buying and selling goods do not offer a structured process to allow the buyer or seller to ensure all proper questions are asked and documented that will allow for a good transaction.
Currently, a significant amount of project work is marketed via advertising, including print ads, door to door advertising, mass mailings, and commercial advertising. Additionally, most project work is not facilitated by an electronic marketplace. Consumers who seek service providers to perform such work must often contact one company at a time, by telephone, mail, fax, or e-mail, in an attempt to determine what providers have the necessary skills, experience and capacity to complete a project. This process is often time consuming, as each company must obtain project specifications, and then make a bid for the project. Sometimes consumers are not offered any defined expectations as to when a bid will be completed, or as to the kind of bid expected. Moreover, there remains a great dependency on word of mouth contacts via friends and associates, which limits the buyers' and service providers' options and marketplace size. Finally, it is often very difficult to assess a service provider's or buyer's quality and reputation.
Furthermore, both customers and service providers typically incur significant expenses in locating each other. For service providers, these expenses are often in the form of advertising, and in the time and effort spent to convince consumers to purchase their services. Likewise, consumers incur expenses in the spending time to locate a suitable service provider. Additionally, where a need is immediate, clients can incur significant irreparable harm where they cannot locate a suitable service provider quickly.
Therefore, it will be appreciated that current Internet marketplace solutions are not readily scalable to facilitate a marketplace in which consumers and service providers can locate each other, and conventional methods of locating service providers and consumers is inefficient and often results in poorly informed choices. Therefore, what is needed are methods, systems and computer program products that enable consumers and service providers to locate each other in an efficient manner, with minimal delay, and with minimal cost. It would also be advantageous for these methods, systems and computer program products to facilitate project work transactions between clients and service providers. Furthermore, it would also be advantageous to allow service providers or customers to purchase lead options to express their desire to receive a match, which would otherwise take great time and expense.